TRANSCRIPT: The Democratic Debate

And I make that point...

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... because earlier on we were talking about the issue of experience. Nobody had more experience than Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and many of the people on this stage that authorized this war.

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And it indicates how we get into trouble when we engage in the sort of conventional thinking that has become the habit in Washington. Now, that judgment is going to have to be exercised moving forward, and I actually think that Joe's point about partition might be the right one.

The only area I disagree with -- with Joe on that -- is that it is important for the Iraqis to arrive at the conclusion that partition makes sense, as opposed to it being imposed by the United States government.

OBAMA: Because I think if that happens, if the perception is that we are carving up the country as opposed to the parties arriving at a decision, then that could antagonize some of the factions and actually make the problem worse.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama, you've invoked the idea of conventional thinking a few times here, yet when I listen to what you're saying about what you would do in Iraq, now it sounds very similar to what Senator Clinton would do.

Is there any difference between you and Senator Clinton on what you would do right now?

OBAMA: My sense is that what all of us need to do over the next 16, 18 months is focus on putting pressure on Republicans to stop giving George Bush a blank check, because if we have to wait for 16, 18 months, that's going to make the situation that much worse.

If we have not began a withdrawal by the time I'm sworn into office, then the next task is to call together the Joint Chief of Staff and to give them the mission, which is to begin an orderly, phased withdrawal, so that we can begin the diplomacy that Joe and Bill and others are talking about.

But look, as I said, there are no good options at this point.

OBAMA: This is the equivalent of George Bush drove the bus into the ditch, and there are only so many ways you can pull that bus out of the ditch. That doesn't mean you don't fire the driver, and it doesn't mean that you don't evaluate how we avoid getting in these same problems in the future.

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KUCINICH: We can talk about George Bush driving a bus into a ditch, but let's not forget there was a Democratic Senate in charge that OK'ed the war. And those senators who are up on this stage helped to authorize that war and they have to take responsibility for that.

Likewise, they have to take responsibility for funding the war. You say you're opposed to it, but you keep funding it.

I think the American people have to look at that and ask, What's going on?

Now, I've had a plan on the table for four years to get out of Iraq, and Democrats in Congress have to stand up to the pledge they made in 2006 to take us out of that war. They have to tell the president now, "Bring the troops home. We're not going to give you any more money for that war."

KUCINICH: The American people have a right to expect that we're going to take a new direction. But, frankly, you cannot expect a new direction with the same kind of thinking that took us into war in the first place.

We cannot leave more troops there. We cannot privatize Iraq's oil. We cannot partition that country and expect there's going to be peace.

We need a president who understands that, one who's been right from the start, and one who has shown the judgment, the wisdom, and the maturity to take the right stand at the time that it counted most, when the American people needed someone to stand up. And I'm the one who did that.

(APPLAUSE)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me move on now. We've got a question -- we've got an e-mail question from Seth Ford of South Jordan, Utah.

And he said, "My question is to understand each candidates' view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could have been prevented or lessened?"

I'd like each of you to answer it. Let me start with you, Senator Clinton.

CLINTON: You know, it's hard to hear you up here, George. I apologize.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll keep it up, and I'll just repeat it again.

My question is to understand each candidate's view of a personal God. Do they believe that, through the power of prayer, disasters like Hurricane Katrina or the Minnesota bridge collapse could've been prevented or lessened?

CLINTON: Well, I don't pretend to understand the wisdom and the power of God. I do believe in prayer. And I have relied on prayer consistently throughout my life. You know, I like to say that, if I had not been a praying person before I got to the White House, after having been there for just a few days I would've become one.

(LAUGHTER)

So I am very dependent on my faith, and prayer is a big part of that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Dodd?

DODD: I agree with what Hillary has just said here. I would not want to try and second-guess the lord's intentions here and to assume that part of his great plan includes some of these actions we see, for a variety of different reasons, here.

DODD: And the power of prayer I think is important to all of us. I hope it is, recognizing that we don't do anything without His approval.

EDWARDS: I have prayed most of my life; pray daily now. He's enormously important to me.

But the answer to the question is: No, I don't -- I prayed before my 16-year-old son died; I prayed before Elizabeth was diagnosed with cancer. I think there are some things that are beyond our control.

And I think it is enormously important to look to God -- and, in my case, Christ -- for guidance and for wisdom. But I don't think you can prevent bad things from happening through prayer.

GRAVEL: What I believe in is love. And love implements courage. And courage permits us all to apply the virtues that are important in life.

And so you can pray -- I was always persuaded or struck by the fact that many people who pray are the ones who want to go to war, who want to kill fellow human beings. That disturbs me.

I think what we need is more love between one human being and another human being.

GRAVEL: And then we'll find the courage to dispel many of the problems we have in governance. The answer to governance is not up here on the dais. The answer is with the American people and the people of Iowa. That's where the answer is.

And I have a proposal, and it's the only one that talks of change. The change is to empower the American people with a national initiative.

And my colleagues, with all due respect, don't even understand the principle of the people having the power.

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RICHARDSON: I pray. I'm a Roman Catholic. My sense of social justice, I believe, comes from being a Roman Catholic.

But, in my judgment, prayer is personal. And how I pray and how any American prays, for what reason, is their own decision. And it should be respected.

And so, in my view, I think it's important that we have faith, that we have values, but if I'm president, I'm not going to wear my religion on my sleeve and impose it on anybody.

BIDEN: George, my mom has an expression. She says that, "God sends no cross you're unable to bear."

BIDEN: The time to pray is to pray whether or not you're told, as John was and I was, that my wife and daughter are dead, to have the courage to be able to bear the cross.

The time to pray is to pray not only before, but pray that you have the courage, pray that God can give you the strength to deal with what everyone is faced with in their life, serious crosses, serious crosses to bear.

The answer to the gentleman's question is, no, all the prayer in the world will not stop a hurricane. But prayer will give you the courage to be able to respond to the devastation that's caused in your life and with others to deal with the devastation.

OBAMA: I believe in the power of prayer. And part of what I believe in is that, through prayer, not only can we strengthen ourselves in adversity, but that we can also find the empathy and the compassion and the will to deal with the problems that we do control.

OBAMA: Most of the issues that we're debating here today are ones that we have the power to change.

We don't have the power to prevent illness in all cases, but we do have the power to make sure that every child gets a regular checkup and isn't going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

We may not have the power to prevent a hurricane, but we do have the power to make sure that the levees are properly reinforced and we've got a sound emergency plan.

And so, part of what I pray for is the strength and the wisdom to be able to act on those things that I can control. And that's what I think has been lacking sometimes in our government.

OBAMA: We've got to express those values through our government, not just through our religious institutions.

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KUCINICH: George, I've been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying to God you were going to call on me. And my...

(LAUGHTER)

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And I come from a spiritual insight which says that...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have a direct pipeline, Congressman.

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KUCINICH: I come from a spiritual insight which says that we have to have faith but also have good works.

KUCINICH: So when we think of the scriptures, Isaiah making justice the measuring line; Matthew 25, "whatever you do for the least of our brethren"; where the biblical injunction, "make peace with your brother" -- all of these things relate to my philosophy.

Now, the founders meant to have separation of church and state, but they never meant America to be separate from spiritual values. As president, I'll bring strong spiritual values into the White House, and I'll bring values that value peace, social and economic justice, values that remember where I came from.

Thank you.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you, Congressman.

Let's turn to another question from here in Iowa. It's on the subject of agriculture, close to a lot of Iowans' hearts. And it comes from Mr. Blaine Baincon (ph).

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: I'm Blaine Baincon (ph), a farmer from Massena, Iowa. I was wondering how you plan to help small farms as the large companies take over more farms.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Dodd?

DODD: Well, George, listen, one of the areas we've got to have is a Justice Department that starts dealing with some of the antitrust issues in our country. It just doesn't cover agriculture, but also a variety of other things, including media concentration here.

The ability today of just concentrating power, allowing so much to be accumulated, is making it very difficult for the kind of independents and smaller interests, including small business and small farmers, to be able to grow and to have the kind of economic success they'd like to have.

DODD: Rural America needs additional attention, as well, here. I'm a great believer that we need to extend the broadband access to our rural communities.

Opportunity shouldn't require that you leave rural America to come to opportunity, but opportunity ought to be able to come to rural America, by taking advantage of the technologies we have today, so that people can stay on these farms and stay in rural parts of our country, including Iowa.

YEPSEN: Senator Edwards, you have criticized U.S. trade agreements. How do you fashion trade agreements to protect American workers, without in turn creating trade wars that hurt American farmers, Iowa farmers and what they're trying to sell abroad?

EDWARDS: Well, the first thing I'd say is I think we've had a failed trade policy in America.

The question seems to have been, on past trade agreements like NAFTA: Is this trade agreement good for the profits of big multinational corporations?

And the answer to those questions on the trade agreements we've entered into has been yes.

EDWARDS: It's been very good for multinational corporations. It has not been good for American workers. And in an Edwards administration, the first question I will ask in every single trade agreement we're considering is: Is this good for middle-class working families in America? That would be the threshold question.

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And, second, we will have real labor and environmental standards in the text of the agreement, which I will enforce. We will have protections against currency manipulation, which the Chinese are engaged in right now.

And then finally -- finally -- we will end these loopholes that actually create tax incentives for companies to leave America and take jobs somewhere else.

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That needs to be brought to an end.

YEPSEN: Senator Clinton, how do you come down on that question of how do you protect American jobs in America without setting up a situation where other countries discriminate against the things we're trying to export, particularly agricultural exports?

CLINTON: Well, I agree with everything John said, with the additional point that your question really raised, and that is that we do export a lot of agricultural goods, many of that through trade agreements.

And I think we've got to do three things. Number one, we have to have more focus on family farms, like the gentleman who asked the question. We have 34,000 family farms, largely, in New York. I've tried to become a real advocate for them because they get lost in the shuffle.

So I've created ways of working with them. I've issued a report about how much difficulty they have getting their products across the border into Canada.

So we've got to do more to make sure trade agreements are not only good for the exporting of agricultural products from great, big agribusiness, but also for small farmers.

CLINTON: Secondly, we've got to do more, as Chris said, to build up the agricultural and rural areas of our country. And thirdly, you know, trade needs to become a win-win.

People ask me, am I a free trader or a fair trader? I want to be a smart, pro-American trader. And that means we look for ways to maximize the impact of what we're trying to export and quit being taken advantage of by other countries.

YEPSEN: Senator Obama, how do you balance -- how do you protect jobs without hurting farmers?

OBAMA: Well, I think that many of the recommendations that have been made are the right ones. There's one other thing, though, that we've got to talk about. And that is that our Congress subsidizes these big megafarms and hurts family farmers oftentimes in the process.

And we've got to, I think, cap those subsidies so that we don't have continued concentration of agriculture in the hands of a few large agribusiness interests. But, on the trade issue generally, we're not going to suddenly cordon off America from the world.

OBAMA: Globalization is here, and I don't think Americans are afraid to compete. And we have the goods and the services and the skills and the innovation to compete anywhere in the world.

But what we've got to make absolutely certain of is that, in that competition, we are hard bargainers.

You know, I'm always struck by the Bush administration touting that this is the MBA president and they're such great businessmen, and they get taken to the cleaners in a lot of these trade agreements.

And we've got to have somebody who's negotiating on behalf of workers and family farmers right here in Iowa, as opposed to someplace else.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Richardson, we have 20 seconds left until a commercial.

Do you agree with Senator Obama's position that we should cap the subsidies to farms?

RICHARDSON: I want to find a way to make sure that the big agribusiness interests don't hurt the small farmer, the family farmer.

What we also need to do is to promote conservation. We need to promote, besides subsidy reform, renewable fuels and technology.

Our farm policy, if we have renewable fuel...

STEPHANOPOULOS: You're going to get cut off by a commercial.

(CROSSTALK)

RICHARDSON: ... enormous exports, trade, jobs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: You have no idea what's been going on behind me in the last 30 seconds, but welcome back to "This Week." We're continuing this Democratic debate here in Iowa.

And I want to go to a question that came in over e-mail. It was from Robert Malzarek (ph) of Montgomery, Alabama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: This question is for all the candidates.

Unlike many others, I think that candidates may tell the truth, just not the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For example, when advocating a position or action, candidates downplay or simply ignore the likely negative side effects.

Can you name a major issue where you didn't tell the whole truth and describe what you left out?

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STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Gravel?

GRAVEL: Yes, I can tell one issue that they're not living up to. My colleagues have all said that they want public financing...

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about you, though, Senator?

(CROSSTALK)

GRAVEL: Well, no, I'm part of it, and I'm telling the truth.

They can do this right now. There's nothing -- and I asked for a pledge from all of them to immediately obey the law we have on the books to use public financing.

They can store their money, their millions, for the general election. But right now, in the primaries, why can't they say what they promised and they said they're for? Otherwise, it means there's a little hypocrisy abroad here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Biden, what's your answer to that question?

BIDEN: In my public life, there hasn't been a time I haven't said what I thought.

I'm sure there's times in my whole life I haven't said everything I've thought, and many times that I've said too much of what I did think.

(LAUGHTER)

(APPLAUSE)

But my problem isn't saying what I think. My problem is saying too much about what I think.

I honestly can't think of an issue in the United States Congress where I haven't straightforwardly said why I was voting, why I was voting that way, and I said it straight up.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Congressman Kucinich, you?

KUCINICH: My entire life I've been saying things that other people were afraid to say, and I've been consistently proven right. So this is what I do.

And in the White House, I'll let the American people know exactly what's going on, our path to peace, to not-for-profit health care, to education for all. That's the kind president that the American people want, straight from the shoulder.

(APPLAUSE)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Obama?

OBAMA: I think there are a number of issues where there are going to be some choices we've got to make and some sacrifices involved. I'll give you one specific example, and that's on energy. All of us on this stage have talked about global warming and how it is a moral imperative for us to do something about this, to ensure that we're passing on a livable planet to our children and our grandchildren.

There will be some costs involved. It's not -- we can't do it on the cheap. There are some things that we can do to conserve energy, but all of those steps are going to require a little bit of hardship and a little bit of pinching, and that's something that we don't have enough of a discussion about.

I've tried to. I went to Detroit, and in front of a bunch of auto makers, I said we've got to raise fuel efficiency standards on cars. And the silence was deafening in the room.

But those are the kinds of choices, I think, that the next president is going to have to advance and have an honest conversation with the American people about.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Edwards?

EDWARDS: Wasn't the question whether there's ever been anything that we didn't say?

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's what I'm asking you, the question -- right.

EDWARDS: That's what I thought it was.

I think, in my case, that would be true about my vote on the war in Iraq.

EDWARDS: I was wrong to vote for this war. But, beyond that, I had huge internal conflict at the time about giving George Bush this authority.

And I did talk about -- as all these other candidates have just said, I did talk about the things that persuaded me to cast the vote. But what I didn't express was the huge conflict I had, because I did not trust George Bush.

It turns out I was right not to have trusted him, and I cast the wrong vote. But that's the one time, and probably the single biggest time that I can think of.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Clinton?

CLINTON: Well, I, too, regret giving George Bush the authority that he misused and abused. It was a very difficult decision, and I tried to weigh it as carefully as possible, talking to a lot of different people and being assured, both publicly and privately, by President Bush and the people close to him that they would use the authority to go in and get inspectors and try to find out if there were weapons of mass destruction and pursue diplomacy.

So, you know, looking back on it, I wouldn't have voted that way again, certainly, because obviously President Bush had no intention of doing what he said he was going to do. And obviously for me that is a great regret.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But did you tell the whole truth when discussing it?

CLINTON: Well, as I saw it, yes, you know, similar to John. You know, when the president of the United States says, as he said publicly, and then as people around him said privately over and over again, "We're going to use this authority to get inspectors back in, "We're going to go to the United Nations," you know, at some point, you do have to make that evaluation.